amused irritation

Accordingly, as we only have a single score of days left until the end of the world on December 21 when the Mayan Calendar’s 13th b’ak’tun ends, I thought it important to tie up a few loose ends before the Apocalypse gets rolling. First off, the portents are painted all over the 20th century, if you care to look.

Also, as a note, the calendar stone which most websites seems to be using to illustrate the story- this one for instance, is actually Aztec(it’s the sun stone of Tonatiuh, silly).

Aztecs and Mayans are wildly different groups, comparable European populations would be Germans and Greeks, and Asian would be Mongol and Khmer.

in 1920, H.P Lovecraft saw his short story “Polaris” published in the December issue of an amateur publication called “The Philosopher”- an excerpt:

This is 21st century America, where science and logic are a shunned belief system rife with disturbing assertions that challenge medieval superstitions and mythologies. You’ve only got 20 days to get that bunker set up in your apartment, best get to Home Depot before the lines get too long.

Around the same time as the Inquest, a tiny piece of rolled-up paper with the words “Tamam Shud” printed on it was found deep in a fob pocket sewn within the dead man’s trouser pocket. Public library officials called in to translate the text identified it as a phrase meaning “ended” or “finished” found on the last page of a collection of poems called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The theme of these poems is that one should live life to the full and have no regrets when it ended. The paper was blank on the reverse and police conducted an Australia wide search to find a copy of the book that had a similar blank reverse but were unsuccessful.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

As New York has recently undergone its own form of apocalypse, in tune with the Assyrian mythos which predict the worlds end as an oceanic flood (accompanied by the return of the chaos dragon Tiamat and her horde of battrachian children rising to devour the land and all of its dwellers), it would be hoped that we might be able to avoid the end times fever which will certainly sweep across the planet. Remember- only 20 days left…